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I'm really trying to love this game.


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Is there a way to prevent my soldiers from promoting en masse? I found a way past the starting squad (which starts with an all corporal squad, which drives me insane. I modded the game to give me an extra 100k so I could dismiss everybody except one Sarge, and then hire 10 rookies.

First mission, gameplay is fine, I actually enjoy it. I defeat the aliens and the debrief comes on my screen. EVERYBODY gets a promotion. Literally every rookie gets promoted to corporal. WTF!

I know the original had a requirement for promotions. IIRC it had something to do with the total amount of soldiers f.e. if you had 20 soldiers, someone could be promoted to Captain. This is a good way to prevent an all corporal squad imo.

I know this sounds a bit like a rant, but I can assure you, it's not. I love XCOM games, and XCOM remakes. I highly appreciate the time and effort put into Xenonauts. It's just positive criticism.

Edited by postm00v
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First of all, you might want to put some

on to help you focus. Then open gameconfig.xml (use something like notepad), and scroll down when you get to the soldier development section, helpfully listed "soldier development variables".

Are you

to your music? Then find the <soldierranks> section. Ranking up is base upon number of characteristic increases they get, so if you want troops to rank up slower, all you have to do is increase the number of characteristic points they have to get before reaching a particular rank. Would you like to know more? Then take a look at War Games' mod for inspiration.
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To be fair, WG doesn't cause any bigger spread in soldier ranks as long as you take care to grind TU, Str and Accuracy every mission.

Promotions could be handled somewhat differently, of course. For example, you could have a more standard progression based on stat points ++ in the following way:

5 xp for each earned stat point

15 xp for each alien kill

20 xp for each alien reaction kill

20 xp for each stunned alien

20 xp for each successful mission

100 xp for each medal

With an optional soldier-based restriction on promotions and stat limits for each rank, thereby giving ranks a recursive pseudo-measure of a soldier's capabilities, as well as possibly countering the "1 mission = +1 to every stat" effect, encouraging soldier rotation.

That being said, it's not exactly my biggest gripe. Certainly not something I'd preface with "I'm really trying to love the game" :P

Edited by Tobbzn
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Or Mr postm00v could solve his problem in another way. He could rename the ranks to be free of officer or chain of command ranks.

Simplest is to name them X1 X2 X3 etc and alll of a sudden the ranks only indicate how experienced/good the soldiers are. None of those pesky cannotations of leadership or command being split between half the squad.

Coupled with Max_Caines suggestion to slow down the rankups.

Edited by Gorlom
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First of all, you might want to put some
on to help you focus. Then open gameconfig.xml (use something like notepad), and scroll down when you get to the soldier development section, helpfully listed "soldier development variables".

Are you

to your music? Then find the <soldierranks> section. Ranking up is base upon number of characteristic increases they get, so if you want troops to rank up slower, all you have to do is increase the number of characteristic points they have to get before reaching a particular rank. Would you like to know more? Then take a look at War Games' mod for inspiration.

Yeah I thought about that, but I don't think it'll solve my little gripe. When soldiers reach a certain amount of XP, they get promoted, resulting in a squad composed of corporals/sergeants etc.

Also, and this might be a shock, my actual name isn't postm00v. So you don't have to call me Mr. Also, it makes me feel old, so stop doing that :P

EDIT : Manual promotions seem like a good idea. Going to try that now!

EDIT 2 : When I tried putting on the relaxing music, Youtube gave me a commercial. Goddamn commercials. :P

Edited by postm00v
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Is the problem that the squad is made up of all the same rank or that it is all real ranks that suggest a chain of command?

Does fictive ranks all subordinate to the commander in the sky fix the problem or still pose a problem?

Does Tobbzn's idea of manually giving them ranks in their name fix your problem?

(Personally I like to have my squad full of the same rank even if it is the highest available)

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What I'm trying now is renaming all ranks to X0-X7, because what you said made a lot of sense. Then I'm going to give my soldiers ranks by editing their names when I feel they deserve it.

I know this sounds really OCD, but you'll just have to forgive me for it.

EDIT: Okay, I found another thing that irritates me. I deleted the ranks (X0 just didn't look right), but the images remain. I want to try and make all the ranks use one image. Is that possible?

Edited by postm00v
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....

....

....

The best help that I could give you is to show you the work of other people who successfully did things like... replace stock rank images with custom ones. And ask obvious questions.

Such as.

Have you considered having the same image but naming it rank.private, rank.corporal, rank.blahblahblah?

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Yeah I know how to rename the ranks, that's not my problem. I'm onto rank images now. :P

I'm trying to let all ranks use one image, if that's even possible. All help is appreciated.

That mod has replaced images as well.. here are the instructions for that bit (assuming that you have downloaded the images)

For the images, replace the "rankimages" folder in the assets with the "rankimages" folder in the package. Then, in the "gui" folder, replace that "rankimages" folder as well (two different folders, same name. I didn't make the game, not my fault. )
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Honestly, the vanilla ranks bug me, too. Having a lot of officers that actually shoot and do stuff in combat is nonsensical enough; having everyone eventually hit Colonel is... blah. It really makes me roll my eyes. I like a lot of the work they've done on this game, but I really don't like this decision. If you're going to use real ranks, use a real rank structure.

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Having a lot of officers that actually shoot and do stuff in combat is nonsensical enough; having everyone eventually hit Colonel is... blah.

Mine start at major, promotes to commander, 1 star general, 2 star general, 3 star general, 4 star general, president of the USA and finally Supreme Defense Fleet Admiral of all Earth Defenses!

^^

PS: I'm totally fine with having 8 American Presidents on the ground in the same squad at the same time :D

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Yeah, the rank thing does annoy quite a few people but we're primarily using rank as an easy way of sorting soldiers by combat experience. It's not realistic but we feel it makes the game more accessible.

And, hey, as the OP discovered - you can always mod it out if you'd prefer it to work another way :)

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